Less Bunnies, More Hats
by Bezo and Yezo
Summary: [Chapter 5 now up! Finally!] While on his way to complete his first mission, Cloud happens upon two very annoying individuals. It gets worse from there. A skewed re-telling of the events of Final Fantasy 7 with a few new faces. Please read and review!
1. She's a Belle, and She Sure is Dandy!

Less Bunnies, More Hats  
  
  
  
Disclaimer: We don't own anyone in this story, aside from Bezo and Yezo. Oh, and Benny the loser-Shinra. He's ours, too. You can borrow him, if you want.  
  
  
  
Author's Notes: Well, we're back. This idea has been percolating for some time, and we were finally unable to keep it in any longer. Not only that, but no one was reading our Final Fantasy 9 version of this. You people are mean! [Yezo pouts]  
  
Anyway, we like Final Fantasy 7. Bezo especially likes Knights of the Round, and Yezo especially likes Puppy-Wuppy and Meowth, but that's another story. Believe us, you'll find out.  
  
  
  
And now, oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooon with the self-indulgence!  
  
  
  
  
  
"Poof!" said the temporal vortex as it deposited Bezo LaBleu and Sunny Yezo (but don't call her Sunny!) neatly in this new universe. This shiny new world. A very brave one. This brave new world, we would say, but we don't want to be sued.  
  
"Poof?!" Bezo repeated, a little hurt. "That's gay! That's Kuja-gay!"  
  
"Hey, at least it didn't say 'ptooey,'" Yezo noted comfortingly as the two peeled themselves from the ground.  
  
"Y'know, Yez,'" Bezo began thoughtfully, "it occurs to me now that all this universe-hopping is bad for my career. I'm probably fired by now."  
  
"Yeah, me too," Yezo pouted. "The modelling agency's probably hired someone else by now."  
  
"Dear, you're not a Mary Sue," he reminded her mildly.  
  
"Oh! Right! I bet the lab has found a new test-subject, then."  
  
"You aren't a hideous, misunderstood freak who is destined to finally find romance and happiness with an effeminately lovely fictional man of your particular tastes, either."  
  
"Then what AM I?" she wondered, blinking.  
  
"The most beautiful girl I've ever known."  
  
"Aw!" she squealed happily, snuggling up to him. "Even more beautiful than Dagger?"  
  
"Far more beautiful."  
  
"That's sweet! More beautiful than Freya?"  
  
"Uh, yeah, that was a given," Bezo chuckled.  
  
"More beautiful than Kuja?!"  
  
"You KNOW my feelings on that subject. Yaoi BAD! Yaoi BAD!"  
  
"More beautiful than Beatrix?!"  
  
"Ooh, that's a tough call...she does have that sexy eye-patch...yeah, more beautiful than Beatrix."  
  
She smiled, quite satisfied. Now for the ultimate test.  
  
"More beautiful than Sephiroth?"  
  
"Of course you're more beautiful than Sephiroth! Yaoi BAD! I'm not chasing Sephiroth because I wanna sleep with him! I'm chasing him because I want to train under him - "  
  
Here, he was interrupted by a giggle from Yezo.  
  
"Yeah, you and all the fan-girls."  
  
"Not like that! I want to...be his student! And then turn on him and kill him. Is that so hard to understand? Besides, I've given up on ever meeting Sephiroth," Bezo sighed, a slight pang in his heart for a lost dream.  
  
And at that most appropriate of moments, a young man quite literally tripped over the pair, nearly impaling Yezo with one of his gigantic yellow spikeys. As the little golden chocobos flying around their heads faded, Bezo and Yezo took note of their surroundings for the first time. It seemed that they were in a train station, on the platform.  
  
"Hey, do you mind?" Bezo demanded angrily. "We're trying to have a nice conversation here, and we don't need YOU tripping over - hold on. Yezo, does he look familiar to you?"  
  
"Yeah," Yezo agreed, head cocked to the side. "He's all...yellow, and spiky!"  
  
"Um...that would me my hair, miss," the young man informed her hesitantly, one eyebrow raised.  
  
"Hey! I know who he is!" Yezo chirped. "It's Squall! And that must be his gun-blade! It doesn't have a trigger, though. Your gun-blade sucks, Squall!" she exclaimed, gesturing to his sword.  
  
"It's...Cloud, actually," the golden-haired young man informed her.  
  
"Cloud?" Bezo echoed. "That's a stupid name! A totally gay name! It's, like, Kuja-gay! Heeeeey! We should name him Kuja!"  
  
"We're not naming him Kuja!" Yezo replied, smacking him soundly with her tail, which gladly, had survived the trip. "One Kuja was enough!"  
  
"Yeah, you bet you're not naming me Kuja! Now go away!"  
  
"Hey, Cloud," Bezo spoke up. "When you kill Sephiroth...again...can I have Masamune?"  
  
"What do you mean, 'when I kill him again?' I've already killed him! Now, move! I've got a job to do, and I'm getting paid good for it!"  
  
Shaking his head sadly at the state that humanity had come to as of late - really, some days he reflected that it might be best if a gigantic meteor would crash into the earth and wipe out all human life - Cloud stepped past the young couple and started towards the gigantic reactor looming on the horizon.  
  
  
  
  
  
"Hmm," Bezo noted, frowning, "that didn't work as I'd planned. So, what do you wanna do in the meantime?"  
  
"I don't know," Yezo replied, swiping lazily at a butterfly with one hand. "What do you wanna do?"  
  
"I don't know - what do you wanna do?"  
  
"I don't know - what do YOU wanna do?"  
  
  
  
  
  
"Good grief," Cloud sighed as he walked away. "I hope I never have to see those two again. Now, where's that guy I was supposed to go meet?"  
  
"Hurry your spiky head, fool!" a voice bellowed from above him.  
  
"Okay, okay," the young man grumbled.  
  
"I'm sick 'a waitin' fer your spiky ass!"  
  
"My ass is not spiky," Cloud informed him a trifle on his dignity, "my head is spiky!"  
  
"You comin' wit' me! But don't you go thinkin' you all hot, jus' 'cause you was in Soldier!"  
  
"I think I'm hot because I have zillions of fan-girls, actually," Cloud explained, jogging toward the chain-link gate.  
  
"Hey, guys!" Biggs called. "We'll break you in!"  
  
"Break you in, we will," added Wedge.  
  
"Hey, stop it, you two!" Barret growled. "Let's jus' get in there."  
  
And so they went.  
  
Seven long corridors, seventy-seven severely annoying random battles, and an annoying Sephiroth flashback later, they were face-to-face with the timer.  
  
"The timer?!" Barret repeated. "What about the damn boss?!"  
  
"Be patient, Barret," Cloud sighed. "If we wanna fight the boss, we have to set the timer."  
  
"Then set the damn timer, fool! I wanna fight this boss!"  
  
"Why?"  
  
"Experience," Barret replied wisely. "When you get to be my age, you'll 'ppreciate experience a little more!"  
  
"Hey, guys!" called a voice from behind them. "I'm the Boss! How ya doin'?"  
  
"Uh...fine, I guess," Cloud replied. After all, one couldn't be rude...wait a second; yes, one could! "Damn, you are the weirdest scorpion guard I've ever seen! Eh, who cares? Let's hit it until it dies, Barret!"  
  
"NOW you talkin' my language! Hit it 'till it dies is my rulebook, foo'!"  
  
With that, a high-energy guitar song started up.  
  
"Where's that coming from?" Cloud mused.  
  
"We ain't got time to talk about that! We gotta battle!" Barret insisted.  
  
"You're right!"  
  
And with that, Cloud attacked, swinging furiously at the creature.  
  
"Ping!" went his sword against the monster. It still did immense damage, though, as it was at an exceptionally low level.  
  
"Good job," Barret admitted. "Now let me show ya how it's done!"  
  
A shower of bullets erupted from his arm...or, at least, from the gun mounted on it.  
  
"Not bad," Cloud smirked. "But watch this!"  
  
"Oh, yeah?!"  
  
"Yeah!"  
  
"Mine's better!"  
  
"Like hell!"  
  
"Shu'up!"  
  
"Hey...how many more times do you think we have to hit it?"  
  
"Dunno."  
  
As Barret gave this reply, the scorpion guard's pointy little tail lifted.  
  
Unwisely, neither man heeded this, and Cloud attacked it.  
  
"Die, stupid boss thingie!"  
  
The scorpion guard raised one scorpion guard eyebrow at them, and chuckled.  
  
"Hah-hah-hah. You should not have done that," it declared tonelessly.  
  
"ZORCH!" said the laser as it effectively fried Cloud and Barret.  
  
"Ow!" said Cloud.  
  
"Ow, fool!" said Barret.  
  
"What did we do wrong?!" Cloud demanded of the universe in general.  
  
Barret scowled at him.  
  
"Recruitin' you was a start."  
  
"Oh, shut up, Barret! Hey, I think I know what happened. Its tail went up, and then we attacked it, so it zapped us with its tail! If we don't attack it when its tail is up, then we can live and run free!"  
  
"Uh, right. No attackin' when its tail's up. Got it," Barret agreed.  
  
"Right. None at all. If that tail is up, we do NOT attack. ARGH!" Cloud finished, rushing the beast.  
  
"Guard scorpion!" the guard scorpion corrected, annoyed.  
  
"Right, right," the narration amended with a sigh. "The 'guard scorpion.' Geez! What a whiner! I hereby dub you the Cloud Scorpion!"  
  
"Heeey! What are you trying to say? Are you calling me whiny?! I am not whiny!" Cloud whined, quite forgetting his brilliant plan of attacking the Cloud Scorpion - "Hey!" it whined - exactly when he shouldn't have.  
  
During this exchange, the scorpion's tail had lowered, and was now rising, drawing a long string of profanities from Barret.  
  
Cloud reared back and prepared to attack. Barret stopped him with an arm.the one that didn't have the gun on it, much to the relief of everyone who may have wanted Cloud alive for a reason.  
  
"Not with the tail up!" the older man bellowed.  
  
"Oh, right, right," Cloud agreed sheepishly. "DON'T attack with the tail up. DON'T. Got it."  
  
At this point, the guard scorpion rushed forward and delivered a mighty peck to the young man's golden head.  
  
"Ow!" Cloud whimpered. "Hey...I suddenly feel like I'm going beyond my limit. Almost like my limit is...breaking."  
  
"Yeah, man, you look...braver, somehow."  
  
"Do I look braver?" Cloud asked, pleased by this bit of unexpected flattery from Barret.  
  
Barret nodded. Cloud grinned.  
  
"Then I'll just have to ATTACK IT ASS!"  
  
"Why not attack the rest of me, too?" it wondered, amused. "Are you gay, or something?"  
  
"I'm not gay, and I'm not a whiner!" Cloud felt the need to reiterate as he hurled himself at the guard scorpion.  
  
"NOT WHEN THE TAIL'S UP!" Barret howled, foreseeing disaster.  
  
As luck would have it, good luck for once, it chose just that moment to die.  
  
A wide grin stretched across Cloud's face as a very victorious song played in the background. He spun his sword in triumph.  
  
Barret ducked and covered, less triumphantly.  
  
"What the hell you doin', man?! You gonna kill someone!"  
  
"I just did kill someone," he reminded the older man pettishly. "That's why I'm spinning!"  
  
"Y'know, there's somethin' we had to do..." Barret began, scratching his chin.  
  
"Four minutes," the timer said, trying to be subtle.  
  
"I jus' can't put my finger on it," Barret said, leaning against the timer.  
  
"Three minutes and fourty seconds..." the timer urged, getting a bit antsy.  
  
"Did it involve bagels?" Cloud called, shining his sword and stroking it lovingly. "Ow!"  
  
"No, I don't think it involved bagels..." Barret shook his head.  
  
"Three minutes and twenty seconds...dumbass!" the timer ground out.  
  
"Quiet, you," Barret scowled. "We're tryin' to remember what we s'posed to do!"  
  
"RUN, YOU IDIOTS!" the timer howled, quite at the end of its inanimate tether.  
  
"Oh, right!" Cloud laughed sheepishly.  
  
And they ran.  
  
  
  
"Hey, look," Cloud noted idly. "It's Jessie! And it looks like she's got her foot stuck."  
  
"Shoul' we go back and rescue her?"  
  
"Yeah. I've always wanted to be a hero," the younger man replied, eyes growing shiny.  
  
And so back they went. And then out they went again, more quickly, at the frantic urging of their friend, the timer.  
  
"Ten seconds, idiots! Go! Go! Go! I don't wanna get sued for this!"  
  
"...Sued?" Biggs repeated, scratching his head as Cloud, then Jessie, then Barret careened past him. "How can a timer get sued?"  
  
This pondering was cut short by a massive explosion. Sadly, the timer was no more...  
  
  
  
'Oh, dear, what was that explosion?' Aeris thought to herself. 'And...why does that girl have a tail?'  
  
She started across the street towards the young couple who our readers shall recognize as Bezo and Yezo.  
  
"Excuse me, miss?" Aeris began slowly. "Do you know that you have a tail?"  
  
"Oh, him? He's not a tail - he's my boyfriend!" Yezo chirped, then frowned. Then she grabbed the furry light brownish tail swinging merrily behind her. "Oh, you mean this thing? Of course! What kinda cat-girl would I be without a tail?"  
  
"Well, as long as you know..." the lovely young flower girl replied hesitantly, shifting her weight from foot to foot uncomfortably. "Do you guys want to buy a flower? They're only a gil!"  
  
"Actually, we don't have a gil. Well, we have about four hundred thousand gil from...somewhere else, but I don't know if they're transferable," Bezo said, holding out a shiny gold coin.  
  
Aeris accepted it, and a frown wrinkled her forehead as she read the inscription on the back.  
  
"Um...who is 'Garnet Til Alexandros?' I-I'm sorry, but I don't think I can accept this."  
  
She returned the coin to the young man.  
  
"Hey, you look familiar," Yezo spoke up, staring intently at Aeris. "You're...Beldandy, right?"  
  
"Well, she's a belle, and she sure is dandy," Cloud chuckled, popping onto the scene for a split second before leaving again, to retain no knowledge of what had just transpired.  
  
"Actually," Aeris replied, scritching her head in confusion of exactly who that young man had been, and where he had come from. He sure was cute, though. She reflected for a moment that he would sure make a cute-looking girl! These were the sorts of thoughts that made Aeris one of the weird ones. "My name is Aeris."  
  
"Isn't it Aerith?" Bezo asked, scritching his own head. "That's what Kingdom Hearts told me..."  
  
"Yeah, Kingdom Hearts also told you that Sephiroth sounds like Lance Bass," Yezo added, shuddering.  
  
"Y'know, Donald Duck could easily kick Cloud's ass," Bezo announced proudly.  
  
"Um...that's wonderful," Aeris giggled, rather enjoying the mental image of a duck beating up on a fluffy white cloud. "Why don't you take a flower for free?"  
  
"Aw, thanks!" Yezo chirped. "It's so pretty!"  
  
"And how would you like a giant bag of useless money?" Bezo grinned, handing her a large brown burlap sack.  
  
Aeris bent to pick up the sack.  
  
"Oh, thank-you! Oof!" she intoned sadly as the weight of the coins dragged her to the ground. Little did she know that the exercise of lugging the bag of coins home so as not to hurt the feelings of these nice people was raising her strength stats to the point that she could actually do damage in battle. Instead of her regular one point of damage, Aeris could now do...three!  
  
"Well, see yuh, Aerith," Bezo called, sauntering away.  
  
"Yeah! Bye, Aeris!" Yezo added, following. "So, whaddaya wanna do when we get on the train?"  
  
"We could join the mile-high club" Bezo suggested eagerly.  
  
"Men," Yezo sighed.  
  
  
  
"Well, fool, we betta get outta here!" Barret called over his shoulder to Cloud, sprinting past the lovely pink-clad brunette, but taking no notice of her.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, I'm comin'" Cloud sighed. Then, as something caught his eye, he stopped. "Hey, miss, do you need some help with that?"  
  
"Oh, thank-you," the brunette replied gratefully, "but I'll handle it, because if I don't, I'll never be able to do more than one damage with a physical attack! But you could buy a flower," she suggested hopefully.  
  
"How much?"  
  
"One gil."  
  
"Um...do you think you could...lower that a little? One gil seems pretty steep..."  
  
"One gil?!" Barret exclaimed, jogging back. "How cheap are you, boy?! Here. There's a gil. Buy the damn flower!"  
  
"Thanks, Barret!" Cloud called after him as he ran ahead again.  
  
"Don't thank me; it's comin' outta your pay!"  
  
"Right, right, of course it is," Cloud sighed, reaching for the flower.  
  
For a moment, both stood there, silent, awkwardly avoiding one another's eyes.  
  
"Well, bye," Cloud said finally. "I guess I'd better go. Y'know, I've got a bunch of Shinra guys wanting to kick my ass."  
  
"Yeah, I know how that is," the young woman replied sympathetically. Then she blushed slightly. "Do you think we'll ever meet again?"  
  
"Well, here's hopin'," Cloud grinned, crossing his fingers.  
  
"Bye."  
  
"Bye."  
  
With that, Cloud jogged toward the bridge.  
  
"Halt!" a voice that tried to be imperious but failed miserable bellowed from behind him.  
  
"Let's get him, guys!" another voice, that of Benny, the loser-Shinra, exclaimed jubilantly.  
  
"Oh, brother..." Cloud sighed, drawing his sword and preparing to fight. 


	2. Benny the Loser Shinra

Chapter 2  
  
The fight, Cloud reflected, was not going well. He wasn't exactly sure how it had happened, but somehow, he had become engaged in a one-on-one battle opposite Benny the Loser-Shinra, who, it seemed, had odd, gravity-defying powers. Benny's fighting skills were legendary...and not for their impressiveness, but more for their comedic value than anything else.  
  
"You guys bored? You should watch Benny fight! It's HIGH-larious!" the other Shinra would often say. In fact, they were saying it right now, calling to various civilians, who were running in terror from the explosion of the reactor. As the crowds gathered, Benny's burning resentment finally became too much to keep suppressed any longer, and he leapt high into the air, striking a dramatic, menacing pose, and freezing there. This was ample opportunity for Cloud to strike him several times with his sword, and then to deliver a mighty power-flick right between the fabled Loser-Shinra's eyes.  
  
"Poor Benny," Aeris sighed, looking on from afar.  
  
"HAHAHAHAHA!" said one of the other Shinra, who we shall call Li'l Timmy, from much closer. The name was ironic, as Li'l Timmy stood seven feet and three inches high, and weighed in at 500 pounds of solid muscle. "Aright, guys, show's over. Let's get 'im!"  
  
Taking him at his word, the other six Shinra soldiers leapt at Benny, pummelling him ruthlessly. Li'l Timmy shook his head in dismay at the stupidity of his friends. Not only was he incredibly muscular, he was also a brilliant tactician, and his intuition within the field of tactics told him that beating up one of their own men, while their real enemy was left to get away, would not help much in the long run, no matter how much Benny may have deserved it, nor how much fun it was.  
  
"You guys are all the Loser-Shinra," he sighed. "Get the spiky guy!" When this yielded no result, aside from one of the other Shinra trying to style Benny's hair into spikes, he rolled his eyes and drew his own weapon. "Fine, fine, I'll do it myself."  
  
He charged forward, howling a battle cry.  
  
Five seconds later, 500 pounds of Shinra soldier flew over the heads of the on-looking crowd, landing squarely on his cleft chin.  
  
"Nope, definitely the wrong way to get promoted," he reflected.  
  
"Alright," Cloud announced with a smirk, "I've had enough of this. See yuh!"  
  
With that, he leapt from the bridge onto a coincidentally passing train. And it's a good thing, too, for if our young hero had opted to jump a second sooner, he would have been a pancake. Mmmm...pancake... Okay, must not write when hungry. Bezo would like everyone to know that he had waffles the other day, by the way. We like waffles. Waffles! Yaay!  
  
Anyway, back to Cloud and his adventures on the train.  
  
"Wow!" Cloud reflected happily. "I'm on a train!" Then, after a moment of thought, he glared up at the sky. "Hey! I would not say that! And just so you know, there are no adventures on this train! It's gotta be the most boring train I've ever seen!"  
  
"Who the hell you talkin' to, boy? I swear, you crackin' up...boy!"  
  
"You said 'boy' twice," Wedge noted, giggling.  
  
"Shu'up, fool! Awright; here's how the alarms work..."  
  
[One comprehensive and inclusive account of how the alarms work later...]  
  
"Uh...I don't get it," Biggs announced sheepishly.  
  
[One MORE comprehensive and inclusive account of how the alarms work later...]  
  
"Oh! Okay; that part was unclear the first time," Biggs said with a nod.  
  
"I DIDN'T CHANGE A DAMN WORD!!!" Barret howled.  
  
"Eh, I just wasn't listening."  
  
"Yeah, me neither," Jessie agreed.  
  
"DAMMIT!!! I'm not explaining it again!"  
  
At this point, the alarms decided that these people were no longer entertaining, and went off.  
  
"Finally," Barret sighed.  
  
"Okay; now WHAT do we do with the weasel again?" Biggs asked.  
  
"Ain't no damn weasel! Jus' move!"  
  
And so they moved with no damn weasel, but with great speed, almost as if there was an invisible timer beckoning them. Which, of course, there wasn't. And it certainly was neither pink nor purple. Heh-heh-heh...ugh.  
  
At any rate, off they ran. And after a greatly confusing and severely painful series of events, they finally made it to another train-station.  
  
"Guys!" Tifa called, waving. "Come over here! I brought Christmas cookies!"  
  
"Uh...what's a 'Christmas?'" Cloud asked, scratching his head.  
  
"I...don't know," Tifa admitted. "But I have cookies! And look! They're shaped like little trees!"  
  
"Uh...that's great, Teef," Barret sighed. "By th'way, this here's Cloud...again."  
  
"Oh! Well, it's nice to meet you, Cloud...again," Tifa said with a smile.  
  
Cloud blinked.  
  
"Uh...but...you know me. We live in the same town, remember?"  
  
"Oh...of course," Tifa said, then stopped. "Wait a minute. Did you go into my room?"  
  
"Why would I do that?" Cloud wondered. "To steal your gigantic bras?"  
  
"Not unless you were goin' parachuting!" Wedge grinned.  
  
Tifa glared at him, and a scene of gratuitous violence followed.  
  
"Oh, I forgot!" Wedge groaned from where he lay mangled and bloodied on the ground. "She can punch!"  
  
"And kick," Tifa added, smirking.  
  
"And kick," Wedge agreed before promptly losing consciousness.  
  
"Hey, guys," said Cloud. "I'm bored. Let's blow up another reactor!"  
  
"Yaay!" said everyone.  
  
  
  
It was at this point that some plot decided to happen, which we shall summarize briefly, as we want to get out of Midgar as soon as possible. If we skipped or missed anything, it was because we have deemed it unimportant. Or maybe it was just because Yezo was whining that she hated Midgar, and Bezo got tired of listening to it.  
  
  
  
"BOOM!" said the reactor as they blew it up.  
  
"Damn!" howled Barret. "This was a damn trap!"  
  
"Hahaha!" said President Shinra. "I have you now! Now it's time for you to face the wrath of my evil robot! Oh, evil robot!" he sang.  
  
One dead evil robot later, Cloud found himself separated from the group, as the robot had most inconsiderately blown up the part of the bridge that he was standing on.  
  
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAARGH!" Cloud said as he plummeted to the ground below.  
  
"He's done for. Let's get outta here!" everyone else said.  
  
"The marines never leave a man behind!" Barret reminded everyone else, scowling fiercely about the circle.  
  
"Uh...but we're Avalanche," Wedge reminded him.  
  
"Oh, right," Barret agreed with a frown. "Let's git outta here!"  
  
  
  
"Hey, Flower-Girl!" Cloud called, sauntering into the church through a newly made gaping hole in the ceiling. "Let's go fight the Shinra together!"  
  
"Um...who are you?" the lovely young pink-clad woman inquired, head tilted to the side adorably.  
  
"I'm Cloud. I have a tragic past."  
  
"I'm Aeris. NOT Aerith, Aeris."  
  
"Great! Let's go!"  
  
"O-kay!" Aeris agreed happily.  
  
"You're not going anywhere!" a ridiculously over-emphasized 'Hey, guys, I'm evil!' voice proclaimed from the door. "Give us the Ancient!"  
  
"What's an Ancient?" Cloud called back.  
  
"I'm an Ancient!" Aeris announced.  
  
"Oh, cool," the fair-haired young man commented before turning to glare at Reno. "No! I must protect her, 'cause I squished her flowers and...I feel kinda bad."  
  
"I have a rod!" Aeris announced proudly.  
  
"Uh...that's great," Reno assured her.  
  
"Check out my sword!" Cloud chirped happily. "It's so big!"  
  
"That's...great," Aeris assured him. "Now, go push some barrels on these guys, or I'll have to fight them with my rod, and extra strength from hauling around that bag of money or not, that would be bad!"  
  
"Oh, no!" Benny the Loser-Shinra exclaimed, bolting into the church. "I'll save you, pretty lady!"  
  
With that, Benny once again proved himself to be Benny, tripping immediately over his shoe-laces - quite some feat, considering he was wearing loafers - and face-planted directly into the flower bed.  
  
"You jerk!" Aeris shrieked. "You broke my flowers! I kill you!"  
  
"Ping!" said Aeris' rod as it collided with Benny's skull.  
  
"Wow...she was nice enough to not hit me very hard," Benny sighed, eyes wide and starry.  
  
"No," Aeris pouted, kneeling beside him as her conscience commanded that she help him up. "I hit you as hard as I could! I just can't hit any harder than this!"  
  
"Me, neither," Benny said.  
  
She took his hand to pull him from the ground. A spark of electricity passed between them.  
  
"Ramuh!" a voice shouted. "Knock it off!"  
  
"What?!" Ramuh returned, aggrieved. "I'm bored!"  
  
Aeris' eyes met Benny's as both decided to ignore this little exchange between Summon Monster and Narrator. Aeris blushed. Benny got a nosebleed. Reno yelled at him to quit bleeding on his uniform. Cloud scratched his head in confusion.  
  
It must have been love.  
  
"Uh...kay," Cloud spoke up. "I'm really glad you two are having this nice moment, but Aeris, can you come with me so we can get away from those two, who are trying to GET you?"  
  
"He can get me any time he wants," Aeris sighed, gazing dreamily over her shoulder as Cloud dragged her from the church.  
  
  
  
"Great job, idiot," Reno barked, smacking Benny upside the head with his little electrified weapon thingie. "Way to let her get away!"  
  
"Oh, that reminds me of the sparks we shared when we first held hands," Benny sighed as he was jolted repeatedly by the little rod.  
  
"Look, Benny, if you don't get it in gear, you're gonna be busted down to...wait a second - what rank are you?"  
  
"Broom boy," Benny announced proudly. "Fifth class!"  
  
"Wow...if you get demoted any more, you're gonna be a paper-weight," Reno noted, shaking his head.  
  
"First class?" Benny chirped, a hopeful gleam in his eye. "It was the dream of my boyhood to be a first class paperweight!"  
  
"There IS only one class of paperweight, and it's eighth," the Turk informed him.  
  
"You mean, I'll NEVER be a first-class paperweight?!" Benny exclaimed, eyes already beginning to tear up. "Oh, the crushing blow to my childhood dreams! Okay, I'm better now. You wanna go for ice cream?"  
  
"Turks don't go for ice cream," Reno informed him indignantly. "We drink beer!"  
  
"Then how come I saw you and Elena eating ice cream in the park together last week?"  
  
"You didn't see that! And if you think you saw it...here's five gil that says you didn't!"  
  
"See what?" Benny said, pocketing the five gil.  
  
  
  
"You know," Cloud noted as he ran from the church with Aeris slung over his shoulder to stop her from running back to Benny, "it's a good thing those two are having that lengthy exchange, or else we may not have gotten away so easily."  
  
"Let's go to my house!" Aeris suggested.  
  
"Are you sure? I just met you!"  
  
"I want you to meet my mom!"  
  
"Okay, now I KNOW I'm not ready for that!"  
  
"Oh, just come along, silly!"  
  
"Well, you'll have to guide me. You're kinda being carried."  
  
"You COULD just put me down..."  
  
"And have you run back to that loser-Shinra? No way!"  
  
"My, my, Cloud, do I detect a note of jealousy?"  
  
"No!"  
  
"You'd better not!" Tifa's voice shouted menacingly from somewhere else.  
  
"Do you listen to everything, Tifa?" Cloud demanded.  
  
"No," the shout drifted back sheepishly.  
  
"Tell Barret I'm okay!"  
  
"Will do," Tifa agreed.  
  
"Who was that, Cloud?" Aeris inquired as the shout drifted away. "Your girlfriend?"  
  
"My, my, Aeris, do I detect a note of jealousy?" Cloud smirked.  
  
"You wish!" Aeris giggled.  
  
"Actually, I don't."  
  
"Well, you should!" she informed him, punctuating the statement with a rap from her rod across his backside.  
  
"Wow...she was nice enough not to hit ME at full strength, too," Cloud remarked to a passing Mu.  
  
"Shut up!" Aeris barked, smacking him several more times, this time in the head, producing no more of a result.  
  
"Is it raining? "Cloud wondered.  
  
"You just wait until I get big and strong! I'll hit you so hard, you hit your own shadow!"  
  
"I could probably hit my own shadow a lot harder than you could hit me."  
  
A pause. Then...  
  
"Meanie!"  
  
  
  
  
  
"I lost the spiky!" Barret sobbed, head cradled in his arms flung out before him on the table. "I lost the poor spiky!"  
  
This, he punctuated by thumping the table several times. Unfortunately, this caused several shots to be inadvertently fired.  
  
"You're going to lose the computer system!" Wedge informed him. "You're going to lose the poor computer system! Stop hitting the table!"  
  
With that, Barret aimed his arm a little more to the left, directly at Wedge, and prepared to bring his arm down on the table once more.  
  
"Hey, you don't wanna lose the Wedge, too, do ya?" Wedge pleaded nervously. "Okay, I'll shut up."  
  
"I lost the poor Spiky! I'll never see him again! He's gone, an' it's all 'cause of me! Shit, I suck..." Barret moaned brokenly.  
  
"Didn't we go through all of this on the train?" Jessie asked, scratching her head.  
  
"Yeah, but this time, he fell down a hole!" the large gun-armed dude informed her. "He's wit' God now."  
  
"Well, he did fall into a church," Biggs recalled with a shrug. "Only a small patch of flowers could have possibly broken that fall."  
  
"Oh, he's gone! He's GONE!"  
  
"Hey, guys," Tifa greeted the group, sauntering into the hideout thingie. "I just talked to Cloud, and he's a-okay! Although, he's hanging out with a girl, which I don't approve of..."  
  
"Oh, he's go - what?" Barret demanded, sitting up abruptly. "Whatchoo talkin' 'bout, Willis?"  
  
"My name is Tifa, actually," the brunette corrected him. "And Cloud's fine.  
  
"Oh, happy day! Cloud is alive and well! Soon as he gets his spiky ass back here, I kill him!"  
  
"Uh..." Jessie began, then shook her head, deciding that it was safer NOT to ask.  
  
"We need to decide what to do," Tifa announced.  
  
"Alright," Barret began. "For some reason that was never revealed, we gotta go see Don Corneo."  
  
"Who's Don Corneo?" everyone asked in unison.  
  
"I dunno. But we gotta go see him. This here book says so," Barret replied, holding up a thin book, reading 'Strategy Guide.' "There's a catch, though. He only likes girls. So here's what we do: I dress up as a woman, and go over there, sneak in, wigglin' my hips, doin' anythin' I can to get in there, get inta his bedroom, and get the information that we need."  
  
Everyone sat for a moment in stunned silence. Finally, Tifa spoke up.  
  
"You know, I could go. Or Jessie could go. Oh hell, even Biggs or Wedge would make a better woman!"  
  
"Are you sayin' I ain't pretty?" Barret demanded, hurt.  
  
"N-no, I'm just saying that the Don would probably prefer a WOMAN!"  
  
"Hey!" Biggs and Wedge cried together, not sure if they liked the implications.  
  
"Alright, alright, fine, Tifa, you can go," Barret conceded, with a wistful sigh that he really never would get to wear those ridiculously over-sized novelty high heels.  
  
"I'm glad he's letting Tifa go," Wedge muttered to Jessie. "He would have made a really ugly woman."  
  
"Cloud woulda made a cute girl, though," Jessie said thoughtfully. "I don't think I've ever seen a prettier man."  
  
"You should meet my brother," a young blond man with a tail and a thief's dagger hanging from either side of his belt told her with a chuckle. "Now, Kuja's the prettiest guy you'll ever see!"  
  
"Git outta the bar!" Barret bellowed. "Can't you see the damn sign? We close at nine! EVERYONE knows that!"  
  
"Fine, whatever," Zidane Tribal said snippily, his tail swishing adorably as he turned to leave. "Yagh!" he shrieked in utter terror as he passed a young man and a young cat-eared woman.  
  
"Wazzup, Tail-Guy?" Bezo greeted absently.  
  
But he was already gone, leaving a little Zidane-shaped dust cloud in his wake.  
  
"He fled," Yezo noted with a giggle.  
  
"Whatever," Bezo sighed. "Let's just go get a drink at this random bar called the Final Heaven."  
  
"That sounds familiar," his similarly named other half said.  
  
"Final Heaven...yeah, didn't we go to that one on sixteenth?"  
  
"Oh, right!" Yezo chirped. "I wonder if the Kamikazes are as good at this one..."  
  
"Alcoholic," Bezo muttered. "And anyway, I don't have any gil."  
  
"Some guy on the street gave me some to shake my tail. Then he got really mad when I started waving it around. I didn't MEAN to smack him upside the head with it!" she said mournfully, patting her little cat-tail.  
  
"That guy is lucky to be alive. No one looks at my girlfriend's tail but ME!" Bezo said, a slight vein protruding from his forehead.  
  
"Hey, look, Bezo! It's a guy with a gun for an arm!"  
  
"It's Mr. T!" Bezo exclaimed, delighted. "Hey, Mr. T! Are there any fools that need any pitying?"  
  
"Uh...what?" Barret asked, whirling about and training his arm on the young man.  
  
"Whoa, hang on there, big gunner," Bezo said, stepping back nervously. "We just came in here for a drink."  
  
"Well, as you can see by the sign on the door, we close at nine," Barret informed both coldly.  
  
"But...it's eight," Yezo spoke up. "Everyone knows that!"  
  
"Oh...so it is. Teef, why'd we kick that other guy out?" Barret asked. Then, looking at the little cat-girl...thing, he did a double take. "Did I miss a meetin' and tails are suddenly in fashion, or somethin'?"  
  
"You've got a Mohawk," Wedge called from behind the counter. "What do you know about fashion?"  
  
"Shu'up!"  
  
"Foo'!" Bezo added, grinning, and earning himself one death-glare and four very confused looks. The glare, just so everyone knows, was from Barret. ^_^  
  
"Um..." Yezo began hesitantly, wandering over to where Tifa stood behind the bar, "do you have Slurpees here?"  
  
"What's a Slurpee?" Tifa asked. She got no answer, though, as Yezo was already curled up in a little ball on the floor, whimpering.  
  
"No...Slurpee...? No...Slurpee...so cold...so cold...er, warm...so warm..."  
  
"Yezo, snap out of it!" Bezo commanded, hauling her from the floor. "Man, are we ever going to find out why we keep going into these games?"  
  
"Bezo...no Slurpee!"  
  
"Hey, do you have any ice cubes?" Bezo asked Tifa wearily.  
  
"Of course! What kind of a bar would we be without ice cubes?"  
  
"Great. How about a blender?"  
  
"Naturally!"  
  
"And some Coke(tm)?"  
  
"What's Coke?" Tifa inquired.  
  
"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" Bezo howled in anguish before joining Yezo on the floor, curling up into a similar little ball. "So...sleepy...need...caffeine..."  
  
After another five minutes of whimpering. Bezo climbed from the floor and dusted himself off.  
  
"Well, if we can't get the drinks we want, we have just one more thing to ask: Can we join AVALANCHE?"  
  
Barret pondered this very carefully. What harm could it do? Were they not always searching for new allies to expand the group? Did strength not lie within numbers, and the hope of the very planet with them?  
  
Then he turned back to the two.  
  
"No." 


	3. A Whole Lotta Woman

Chapter 3  
  
  
  
It was a dark and stormy night. Fortunately, that was on the other side of the planet, near a gigantic crater that no one could explain. Therefore, where Cloud and Aeris were, it was a beautiful sunny day, the birds grazing in the fields, the cows chirping in the trees. It was a strange day, but beautiful nonetheless.  
  
"Be quiet, you damned cow!" Elmyra howled, hurling a book out the window. As the large hardcover sailed through the air, the sun glinted brightly off the gold words reading, 'A Quaint and Curious Volume of Forgotten Lore - Volume 1: Luminaire.'  
  
"Moooooooooooo!" the cow chirped painfully as it was struck full on by the volume and flew majestically through the air with a large green book embedded in its backside.  
  
"Uh..." Cloud observed, scratching his head as the cow blasted off to another dimension, where it proceeded to land on Copy Copy Copy Copy Rezo. "What the heck kind of weird place do you live anyway, Aeris?"  
  
"Oh, dear," Aeris sighed. "Mother must have been drinking espresso again...it always makes her paranoid, and she thinks the cows are out to get her."  
  
"Which we are," one of the cows informed her with a polite grin as it flew past.  
  
"I knew it!" Elmyra shrieked, launching herself out the window at the sailing bovine. Then, pausing mid-air, she glanced at the approaching pair. "Oh, hello, Aeris. Who's your boyfriend?"  
  
"He's not my boyfriend," Aeris giggled, blushing slightly. "He's a boy, and he's my friend, but he's not my boyfriend!"  
  
"So, what is he, then? Your 'friend-boy?'"  
  
"Yeah! He's my 'friend-boy!'"  
  
"Oh, that's nice, dear," Elmyra smiled at her lovely adopted daughter. "Now, excuse me for a moment while I go chase down that cow and remove its entrails through its nose. And when I get back, young man, would you like a cookie?"  
  
"Mom," Aeris began nervously, "you're scaring my friend-boy."  
  
"Actually," Cloud put in, "I was just thinking the same thing." His strangely glowing eyes became dreamy. "Mmm...cookie..."  
  
"Argh! She's removed my stomach!" one of the many flying cows howled in agony. "Er...which one is that?"  
  
"Number 4. See? It's got a label," Elmyra informed the unfortunate creature. "It also says 'Alberta Grade A," she added, confused.  
  
"I'm corn-fed," it announced before immediately slumping to the ground, dead.  
  
"Now!" Elmyra exclaimed brightly, skipping back over to Cloud and Aeris. "How about that cookie?"  
  
"Sounds great!" Cloud replied enthusiastically.  
  
"First, though, I must tell you about Aeris's origin."  
  
"Oh, mom!" Aeris groaned in dismay. "You ALWAYS tell that story to my friend-boys!"  
  
"Hey, hey, hey, just how many friend-boys do you bring home?" Cloud demanded.  
  
"My, my, Cloud, do I detect another note of jealousy? This is becoming symphonic!"  
  
"Cloud?" Elmyra repeated. "That's a hippie name! I'm gonna call you-"  
  
"But Cloud's my name!" Cloud protested.  
  
"Well, what's your last name?" Elmyra pressed.  
  
"Strife," he replied sulkily.  
  
"You're...kidding me, right? Cloud Strife? You sound like a whiner!"  
  
"I'm not a whiner!" he whined.  
  
"Suuuuure you're not," she drawled, exchanging a wink with her daughter. "Now, for my story."  
  
"Uh, mom? Isn't it MY story?"  
  
"Right, right. It all started at the train station..."  
  
  
  
"Can we join AVALANCHE yet?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Can we join AVALANCHE yet?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Can we join AVALANCHE yet?"  
  
"No."  
  
"Can we at least stop capitalizing it?"  
  
"Sure."  
  
"Can we join Avalanche yet?"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Can we have a cookie?" Yezo put in.  
  
"No!" Barret exclaimed.  
  
"Can we NOT have a cookie?" Bezo tried, a devious gleam in his eye.  
  
"No," Barret replied, gritting his teeth. "You can not have a cookie. Now, you can see by the clock, it's 8:57, which means ya got three minutes to get the hell outta here."  
  
"Can we join Avalanche first?" Bezo asked.  
  
"No!"  
  
"But I wanna save the planet!" he whined, having something of a Cloud moment.  
  
"He just wants to meet Sephiroth," Yezo explained with a sigh.  
  
"Sephiroth?" Tifa repeated guardedly. "How do YOU two know about Sephiroth?"  
  
"Man, I know everything about Sephiroth, from his shoe size, to what he likes to wear on special occasions!" Bezo announced proudly.  
  
"I know his bubble-bath preference!" Yezo chirped. "Citrus-blend scented, and he likes a rubber ducky. The rubber ducky's name is Masamune. He changed it from Mr. Wiggles."  
  
"Okay," Tifa said after a long pause. "Do you have anything useful to tell us about him?"  
  
"Isn't Sephiroth dead?" Barret asked, scratching his chin thoughtfully.  
  
"He's not dead!" Bezo proclaimed. "He's lying in wait, ready to strike out at those who wronged him so wrong...ly. Uh, yeah. Go Masamune."  
  
"How do you guys know so much 'bout Sephiroth?" Barret demanded.  
  
"Don Corneo told us!" Yezo informed him, making up a plausible sounding lie.  
  
"I KNEW we had to go see him for a reason!" Barret exclaimed jubilantly. "Awright, so I'll go dress up as a woman-"  
  
"We already covered this, Barret," Tifa reminded him wearily.  
  
"Damn," Barret sighed.  
  
  
  
"Wow, that was some story," Cloud noted two hours later, munching happily on his cookie. "There's just one thing I don't understand. What's an Ancient?"  
  
Rolling her eyes, Elmyra launched back into the tale.  
  
  
  
"Is it time yet?" Sephiroth wondered, glancing at his calendar. "Nope, not yet. Four more days. And then the Shinra will pay. And so will everyone else. Especially that Zack guy," he finished with a growl.  
  
"Zack already paid, remember?" Masamune spoke up in his mind. "We already killed him good!"  
  
"Oh, yeah! Happy memories," Sephiroth sighed, stroking Masamune lovingly. "Ow," he then reflected sadly, bandaging up his hand.  
  
And the seconds passed like years.  
  
"Wow," Sephiroth said mournfully. "The seconds are passing like years. But only four days more until my plan comes to fruition, and I get my wings at last!"  
  
"Your...wings?" Masamune repeated, confused.  
  
"You'll see," Sephiroth informed his trusty, inanimate companion with a wicked smile.  
  
"I swear, this boy's losing it," Masamune commented to the woodwork in Sephiroth's head.  
  
  
  
While Sephiroth was having a conversation with his sword, which oddly enough is a manifestation of his rational self, as well as being a compensation for...[ahem]...various perceived inadequacies, Barret still hadn't given up on being the one to wear the dress.  
  
"C'mon, Teef, lemme wear the dress!"  
  
"No!"  
  
"Please?"  
  
"You're scaring me, Barret!"  
  
"Will it help if I stop aiming my gun at yer head?"  
  
"No!" Tifa exclaimed.  
  
"You're scaring us, too, Barret!" Yezo announced.  
  
Both Tifa and Barret turned to glare at the young pair.  
  
"I thought we told you to get outta here!" Barret growled.  
  
"Not until we get into AVALANCHE!" Bezo shot back petulantly.  
  
"You're capitalizing it again, Cuddle-Ducky," Yezo murmured.  
  
"How do you know?"  
  
"I can tell," she replied sagely.  
  
"I'm glad you two havin' this little moment," Barret told them pleasantly. "It gives me time to pick up both you, and throw you out the door."  
  
"I wondered why I was suddenly traveling without thinking about it," Bezo noted as he sailed out the door.  
  
"I thought it was the magic of Midgar!" Yezo added, darting futilely to the side as Barret made a grab for her, catching her tail as a result. "I always hated Midgar."  
  
The next instant, Yezo flew out the door and landed atop Bezo.  
  
"Ow..." said Yezo.  
  
"Yaay!" said Bezo.  
  
"Not here, honey," she cautioned him. "And anyway, don't we want to go back in there and do WHATEVER IT TAKES to get into AVALANCHE?"  
  
"Whatever you say, Zoah," Bezo snickered.  
  
"I AM NOT ZOAH! SHUT UP!"  
  
" Well, I wouldn't mind if you wore the outfit. Just cross straps and a loincloth?"  
  
"And a big ol' helmet?! Sicko!"  
  
"Okay, leave the helmet at home. Metal doesn't really turn me on...unless it's forged into a gigantic twelve-foot blade."  
  
"Um...you're scaring me, honey..."  
  
  
  
"Wow! What a great story, Mrs. Aeris's Mom!"  
  
"My name is Elmyra," she replied stonily. "So please stop calling me Mrs. Aeris's Mom."  
  
"You got it, cookie lady!"  
  
"And cookie lady!"  
  
"Right-o, Cow Crusher!"  
  
"You know, cows aren't the only things I can crush," Elmyra ground out ominously, shaking her fist.  
  
"Eep!" Cloud eeped, darting away, then darting back and seizing Aeris's wrist, dragging her with him.  
  
  
  
"Barret!" Wedge barked. "Take off the women's clothing! We already agreed that Tifa would be the one to dress up for Corneo!"  
  
"Aw, you never let me have any fun," Barret grumbled, snatching off his glittering tiara and tossing it reluctantly to the side.  
  
"You have a weird sense of fun, Barret," Tifa noted, shaking her head.  
  
"Hey!" the large man exclaimed. "Do you think it's been easy, bein' both mother and father to Marlene?"  
  
"Just because you're both mother and father to her doesn't mean you have to dress like it!" Wedge told him severely.  
  
"Pleeeeeease let me dress up too, Teef!" Barret pleaded one last time.  
  
"I told you, Barret, NO!" Tifa exclaimed. "You're not dressing up, and that's final!"  
  
"Aw, damn," he muttered. "Well, then les' go."  
  
  
  
"Wow!" Tifa said half an hour later. "Here I am at Don Corneo's mansion! Hmm...that blonde girl looks familiar...I wonder why."  
  
"I hate my life," the blonde girl said in a husky baritone.  
  
"Stop complaining, Friend-Boy!" the lovely brunette girl, clad in a red evening gown, commanded.  
  
"Stop calling me that!" 'she' shot back.  
  
"That voice sounds familiar..." Tifa muttered to herself as the three waited apprehensively to be called into the Don's bedroom. "Wait a minute! Cloud? Is that you?!"  
  
"Tifa?!" the blonde 'girl' exclaimed. "There you are! I've been worried!"  
  
"Not as worried as I am," Tifa muttered, taking in the pretty purple silk dress that adorned the young man, and catching a whiff of a very sexy sort of cologne. "I thought Barret was the only one...How did you get here, anyway?"  
  
"Don't ask," Cloud requested through gritted teeth. "This has been the worst day of my life. If I have to fight one more house, I'll scream."  
  
"Er...right," Tifa said slowly. Then she turned to the girl in red. "So, who are you?"  
  
"I'm Aeris! With an 's,' not a 'th.'"  
  
"Okay, Aeris. I'll remember that."  
  
"Thanks! What's your name?"  
  
"Tifa," she replied.  
  
"Hey!" Cloud broke in. "Why am I being ignored?"  
  
"We're having a girl-moment," Aeris explained with a chilling dignity.  
  
"We...are?" Tifa scratched her head.  
  
"Yes!"  
  
"Well. Okay, then."  
  
"Barret!" Cloud exclaimed as the tall man sauntered past in a pretty gown of yellow chiffon. "They got you too, huh?"  
  
"Uh...yeah. I hate this. This sucks," Barret said, eyes shifting about nervously. "Ain't I pretty?"  
  
"Of...course you are, Barret," Cloud assured him.  
  
At that moment, one of the Don's henchmen came out of the bedroom.  
  
"He's ready for you, ladies," the man said before scurrying down the hallway.  
  
"Awright, girls make way for Foxy Barret!"  
  
With that, Barret strode through the open door.  
  
"Tifa," Cloud murmured, "do you think that maybe Barret's getting a little too into this?"  
  
"Yes," Tifa sighed, rubbing her forehead. "Yes, I do."  
  
  
  
"Wow," Don Corneo breathed in awe. "This is a really tough choice!"  
  
His eyes lit on Aeris.  
  
"She's got a certain cuteness appeal, of someone really pure an innocent..."  
  
The his gaze slid to Tifa.  
  
"But she's got really massive hooters!" Then he turned and glared at his two henchmen. "Stop whistling the Jeopardy theme!"  
  
"Sorry," they chorused together, and Corneo continued down the line.  
  
"She smells really good. Really sexy. And what a dress! Purple silk...oh, yeah. And silky blonde hair...I love blondes. They have more fun, and then I do, too," he grinned, leering at Cloud, who backed away nervously.  
  
Then his gaze swung over to Barret, and his grin widened by a foot or so.  
  
"And her! She's a whole lotta woman!"  
  
Barret blushed demurely and giggled.  
  
"And I love a woman with a gun for an arm!" Corneo continued. "It's so...military sexy!"  
  
Barret stroked his gun-arm lovingly. A good thing he had gone for that manicure and weapon smithing.  
  
"Baby," he murmured to it, "you and I are goin' places!"  
  
"I am very deeply disturbed by this," a whisper cut through the silence of the room.  
  
"We all are, Cloud," Tifa replied, also whispering.  
  
"I think it's cute," Aeris chirped.  
  
"I don't like your new girlfriend, Cloud," Tifa whispered to him.  
  
"She's not my girlfriend!" Cloud shouted, quite forgetting to keep his voice down.  
  
"Girlfriend?" Corneo repeated, his ears perking up. "Ooh...that just made the choice a little harder. I like a girl who don't mind sharing."  
  
"I'm more than enough for any man," Barret spoke up, winking.  
  
"Well! That decides it!" Corneo announced. "You three are going to entertain my henchmen."  
  
"Woo," Cloud said utterly unenthusiastically. "Yay us."  
  
Corneo continued.  
  
"Barrettina...why don't you come here and sit beside me?"  
  
"Well..." Barret drawled, sidling over to the bed, "okay."  
  
"There are some things I'd rather not think about," Cloud informed the girls as they left, "and this is about 98% of them. How could things get any worse?"  
  
  
  
Meanwhile, Tifa and Aeris had been dragged down to the basement/dungeon, where they currently found themselves chained side by side to the wall.  
  
"Kinky," Aeris commented.  
  
However, despite the chains, and Aeris's apparent enjoyment of the chains, Tifa did not see the current situation as her biggest problem. That little hussy was after her man, and Tifa was NOT a girl who liked to share.  
  
"Listen, Aerith," she began, casting a sideways glare at the other girl.  
  
"It's Aeris!" Aeris shot back.  
  
"Oh, I'm thorry, Aerith," Tifa snickered, enjoying herself hugely. "I mutht have a lithp, Aerith."  
  
"Stop it!"  
  
"You want me to thtop it, Aeith?"  
  
"How would you like it if I called you Boobies?"  
  
"Shut up!"  
  
"I don't think so, Boobies."  
  
"Anyway, as I was saying, Aerith," Tifa ground out, "you had better get something straight. If you even think about looking at Cloud, there's gonna be blood."  
  
"Cloud?" Aeris echoed. "He's just my friend-boy!"  
  
"Your...what?"  
  
"My friend-boy!"  
  
"Oh..."  
  
"I was looking forward to meeting you. He talks about you constantly."  
  
"O-oh," Tifa said articulately, blushing slightly.  
  
And with that, both girls fell silent, possibly contemplating the fact that these chains were getting a little uncomfortable.  
  
  
  
  
  
Five minutes later, Cloud found out exactly how things could get worse. He was locked in a room with ten men, all of whom were 'rarin' to go,' so to speak, and very possibly drunk. Or blind. Or both.  
  
"You sure are a sweet li'l thing," one of the men told Cloud, stroking his wig gently.  
  
"Uh...thanks."  
  
"Why don't you come over here an' give us a kiss?"  
  
"Uh...no thanks."  
  
"Lis'n," one of the men spoke up sternly, "the Don's payin' you to entertain us. So dance!"  
  
"Okay, that's enough," Cloud decided, grabbing the hem of his dress and flinging it aside.  
  
The men in the room stared in horror. Time stood still. And in the distance, a dog barked. This dog would later prove to be Red XIII, who would informed the party that he was not actually a dog, that he was, rather, an advanced species, capable of informed conversation, and a valuable member of the party. But in the meantime, Cloud felt a draft. He glanced down to investigate the cause of this, and was horrified to learn that he had apparently forgotten to put his ordinary outfit on underneath his pretty purple dress.  
  
"Aw, shit," he muttered. 


	4. That Thing Ate Karma for Lunch

Chapter 4

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Author's Notes: We hate Midgar. It is not a rational hate, but it is our own. Thank-you. Now, go read and review! [Bezo shakes fist menacingly]

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   "Hey, guys," Cloud laughed as he reached for the sugar dish and dropped a cube into his teacup. "Do you remember the time we all dressed up and went to Don Corneo's mansion?"

   "Do I!" Barret exclaimed emphatically, happy images of the pretty yellow chiffon number he had gotten to wear dancing through his head.

Tifa snickered.

   "And do you remember when Cloud ripped off his dress because he thought he had his normal clothes underneath, and then we all heard a loud scream and came running to find Cloud running naked through the halls?"

   "Boy, do I!" Aeris proclaimed emphatically, then frowned and turned to Tifa. "How did we get out of those chains?"

   "Acme Chain-Be-Gone," Tifa announced proudly, holding up a brightly labelled can of powder. 

   "And do you guys remember when Aeris got kidnapped by the Shinra, and we had to go rescue her, and we met up with Red XIII?" Cloud asked, patting the shaggy red beast on the top of the head fondly.

   "I wish I was dead," Red XIII sighed. 

   "And do you guys remember when you met up with us and got out of Midgar?" Yezo chirped excitedly.

Cloud, Barret, and Tifa glared at her.

   "Leave it to you to taint an otherwise blessed event," Cloud sighed with a roll of his eyes.

   "Oh, admit it, Cloud. You love us," Bezo grinned.

   "You're right, you guys. I do love you. I just hide it really well beneath a mask of hostility."

   "You suck, Cloud!" Yezo proclaimed, sticking her tongue out at him childishly.

Then, as a thought occurred to her, she turned to Bezo, tongue still out.

   "Y'know, Bezo," she tried to say. "As long as I've got my tongue out, we might as well take advantage of it."

   "Huh?" he asked, scratching his head at his girlfriend's utterly unintelligible words.

   "As long as I've got my tongue out, let's take advantage of it," she repeated, annoyed.

However, as her tongue was still out, it was still impossible to understand.

   "What are you talking about, Yezo?" Bezo demanded.

Rolling her eyes, she took more direct action, leaping at Bezo and taking him soundly to the ground. From here, the rest of the party – the tea party, that is – delicately averted their eyes, moving the various and sundry breakable items they had accumulated out of the path of the amorous couple. 

   "So," Cloud sighed, quite desperate for something to distract him from the fact that a yellow tee shirt had just flown through the air, "what's the plan? Besides you two picking the worst possible place to make out, of course..."

   "Let's go to Kalm," Tifa suggested. "I bet when we get to Kalm, something really important will happen!"

   "I don't want to go to Kalm," Cloud shot back snippily. "I have bad memories of Kalm. It reminds me of Sephiroth!"

   "Sephiroth?" Bezo chirped, removing his mouth from Yezo's.

   "Darn it, not again!" she cried angrily before flouncing over to the campfire where Barret sat motionless, to pout.

The large man turned to give her a comforting glare.

   "What do you want?"

   "Bezo's mean," she informed him tearfully.

   "Great," he said boredly. "I didn't ask fer your life story. An' quit cryin' on me!"  
   "Sorry," she sniffled as the hydro-pump tear jets died down to a trickle.

   "Yezo, it was a false alarm," Bezo called placatingly. "He wasn't really talking about Sephiroth. We can go back to making out now."

   "Oh!" Yezo gasped sarcastically. "Can we?"

   "No," Cloud interjected through gritted teeth. "Because right now, we're leaving for Kalm, because right now, the girls want to go do some shopping."

   "Yeah!" Aeris chirped. "I'm all out of chocolate."

   "And I need some facial moisturizer," Tifa added sadly. "That trip through the sewers made my skin all dry. The water's way too hard!"

   "Hey!" Cloud exclaimed, quite annoyed. "I had to fight the new president of Shinra! And his cat-thing!"

Yezo's little cat ears perked up.

   "Kitty?!" 

   "No, no kitty," Cloud replied, exasperated. "Just a big black panther that could have ripped your head off if by chance you had been there helping instead of chasing butterflies."

   "Oh," Yezo sighed sadly. "No kitty. And no butterfly. AND no bunny! This world sucks! Puppy Wuppy is the only fwuffy wittle aminal, and he won't let me cuddle him!"

   "Puppy...wuppy?" Red XIII repeated in disgust and horror. "Please, gods, tell me she didn't mean me!"  
   "No, she meant me," Barret said sarcastically. "Woof, woof, woof!"

   "Well, that's alright, then," Red XIII shrugged as best he could, quite relieved.

   "Damn, that's a dumb dog," Barret sighed sadly. "Yo, Pointy! Let's get goin'!"

   "My name is Spiky," Cloud shot back, before stopping and considering this a little more carefully. "No! Wait! I'm Cloud!"

   "You're funny, Cloud," Aeris giggled.

   "Let's just go," Cloud groaned, rubbing his forehead wearily. 

   "Hey, Spiky," Barret began, tossing a small black object at him.

   "Oops," Cloud grinned as he completely missed the throw and the object crashed to the ground and consequently into hundreds of pieces.

   "Damn," Barret sighed again. "That was the PHS! A key item, you spiky fool! Ah, damn," he grumbled. "Les' jus' use these cell-phones."  
   "Great!" Cloud chirped. "Toss one this way, Barret!"

   "Hell, no!" Barret said emphatically, walking over and carefully handing it to the younger man. "Look, here's what we do: Cloud, Tifa, you two comin' wit' me. The rest of you, go away."

   "We should meet you in Kalm, right?" Aeris asked expectantly.

   "Yeah. Right," Barret agreed, eyes shifting nervously about. "If we ain't there, jus'...go back to Midgar, an'...live there. Forever."

   "But what if you need the super-smashing might of my rod?!" Aeris exclaimed, horrified.

Barret took a deep breath, putting an arm around her. 

   "Look, Aeris, there's no nice way to say this, but...you're as effective in combat as a noodle. Not a strong noodle, mind you. Not a wet noodle, either. They can sometimes do some damage if you know how to swing one. Jus'...a dry, brittle, weak noodle that can be broken by...like, Bezo."

   "I am NOT that weak!" Aeris exclaimed tearfully.

   "Oh, fine. By Yezo, then," Barret amended.

   "Hmph!" Aeris hmphed, flouncing away. 

   "Wait, Aeris!" Yezo called, hurrying after her.

Red XIII gave an irritated grumble and reluctantly followed the two at a slow jog. 

   "Hey...everyone?" Bezo called, scratching his head in confusion as he glanced around at where there had previously been people.

---------------------------------------

   "Oh, no!" Cloud exclaimed. "It's a guy on a motorcycle, and he's headed this way!"

   "Dammit!" Barret exclaimed. "After dealin' with those idiots, last thing we need's a damn biker gang!"

   "I don't think that's a biker gang," Tifa said, peering closely at the madly gibbering creatures approaching. "There aren't enough tattoos, and I don't smell beer. At least, from their direction, _Barret,_" she finished, glaring reproachfully at him.

    "I needed somethin' to deal wit' Midgar! I been there for years, an' I'm sick of it!"

    "Uh, guys?" Cloud interjected rather frantically while being repeatedly smacked across the back of the head. "I'm being attacked by strange motorcycular creatures, and I can barely lift my sword! Can one of you help me?!"

   "No one told you to steal the side of some guy's van and make a sword outta it!" Barret reminded him severely, wondering for the first time...that minute...if taking a little extra beer for the road mightn't have been a good idea.

   "Is this a good time?" Cloud demanded painfully, sailing directly into the air and back down again with increasing speed. 

   "Well, you know, Cloud," Tifa began thoughtfully, "Barret _is_ right."

   "This. Is. A. Bad. Time!" Cloud exclaimed jerkily, the enemy's blows punctuating his words as he flew once again into the air, once again quite against his will. 

   "Well...okay," Barret sighed reluctantly. "I guess we can't let you die. Yet."

   "Thanks, Barret," Cloud's weak, wavery voice drifted, both weakly and waveringly from the Cloud-shaped indentation, reaching down at least six feet, give or take. "Ow, by the way..."

   "I think it might be a little late," Tifa noted, watching curiously as pack of Devil Rides turned and headed in the opposite direction, pausing to throw a derisive laugh and a raspberry over what passed for their shoulders.

Barret sighed.

   "[Random noises of many bullets being fired]," said his arm, which was strange, as it wasn't normally such a conversationalist, although it did have quite a talent for exhausting one topic completely – that of killing everything in the nearby vicinity – before moving on. We are still waiting for this to occur.

   "Well said," Tifa congratulated him enthusiastically. "Let's go!"

And so the two long-time friends sauntered past first Cloud-shaped indentation in the ground, and then past the charred remains of several members of the Devil Rides Motorcycle Enthusiasts Club's local chapter 24601. Things were not going well for their annual meeting.

It is possible, however, that they were going even worse for the young pointy-headed lad lying, battered and broken in a him-shaped indentation in the not particularly soft or forgiving earth.

   "Ow..." he whimpered again, promptly losing consciousness. 

--------------------------------------------

    "La la la la la la la," Aeris sang merrily, skipping through the dew-wet grasses, which were oddly placed in the scorching heat of late afternoon.

   "La la la la la," Yezo replied, skipping along beside her.

   "La la la la LA," corrected Aeris.

   "La la la la la?" Yezo attempted again, glancing sideways hopefully at the flower girl.

   "La la la," Aeris said with a shrug. Far from perfect, but it would have to do.

   "La la la la la la la!" Yezo sang merrily.

   "La! La la la!" Aeris corrected, more firmly than before.

   "La la? La la la!" Yezo said, quite wounded.

   "La la la. La la la la la!" Aeris informed her, beginning to get rather annoyed.

  "La," Yezo whimpered sadly, cat-ears and tail drooping dejected, her sweatdrop making a reappearance.

   "La la la," Aeris noted curiously, eyeing this new, very soggy visitor.

   "La la la la la!" Yezo informed her proudly.

   "La la la la la la la," Aeris agreed.

   "La la la la la la la!" Yezo sang blithely, resuming her skipping.

Aeris stopped short. Somewhere, somehow, something cracked.

   "LA LA LA LA LA!" she howled in a blind fury no one believed she was capable of.

   "La!" Yezo whimpered in a punctuated staccato, dodging behind a conveniently placed tree and huddling there, terrified.

   "La la la," Aeris called after her, feeling slightly guilty over yelling at her new...acquaintance, but feeling that she had been quite justified. After all, such a thing was inexcusable! Not understanding the melody of her tune! It was quite simple and very tonal! Who did this infuriating cat-girl think she was? John Cage?

   "La la la la la?" a wary voice asked from behind the tree.

   "La la la," Aeris replied.

   "La la la," Yezo sang back.

   "La la la la la la la!" Aeris finished, quite delighted that Yezo seemed to have caught on at last.

   "La!" Yezo exclaimed joyfully, bounding out from behind the tree, sensing that she had been, for now, forgiven.

Aeris furrowed her brow, then softened. That could have been a minor ornamentation, quite suitable to the melody at hand.

Yes, for now, the cat-girl could stay.

From several feet behind the merry duo, Red XIII shook his shaggy...red mane.

   "What...in the hell are they talking about?"

Bezo, however, was quite anxious to play, too.

   "Loo!" he sang strongly and clearly.

Both girl halted in their tracks, turned around slowly, and fixed the offender with two steely glares of utter and sudden death. Or at least, a whole lot of distinct unpleasantness, with just a dab of menace. Mostly run-off from the scary creatures lurking about, as it certainly didn't come from Aeris or, God forbid, Yezo.  

   "Sorry," Bezo whimpered sadly. "No loo."

---------------------------------------------

   "Awright, Spiky, getup here!" Barret laughed, hauling Cloud bodily from the Cloud-shaped hole in the ground.

   "Yeah, thanks for coming back for me, you two," he grumbled. "It only took you two HOURS!"

Tifa rolled her eyes.

   "Geez, Cloud, bitter?" 

   "Hey, YOU weren't stuck in a hole for two hours!"

   "An hour and fifty-eight minutes!" she corrected sternly.

   "Fine!" Cloud exclaimed. "An hour and fifty-eight minutes!"

   "Well, it doesn't matter anymore," she reminded him huffily. "You're out now."

However, it seemed that this small turning of events in Cloud's favour was to be short-lived, for the instant he stood up straight at the edge of the hole, pausing to brush the dust from his front, the earth gave such a decided rumble that he fell back in.

   "Dammit!" the Cloud-shaped hole howled, or rather, the Cloud within it howled, since, of course, holes don't ordinarily talk, unless they are mouths. 

However, as the first rumble was not exclusive, but rather quickly followed by more, Tifa and Barret decided that their attention would serve its best purposes elsewhere. 

A massive purple shape, the purpleness of whom has been much debated, as indeed he was not purple at all, but grey everywhere except his gaping maw, which glowed a dangerous red, and his chest, shaped like an exceedingly valuable diamond of approximately one billion carats, loomed ominously on the horizon.

  "What the fuck?!" Barret exclaimed.

Tifa gaped at him.

   "You've never said that before, Barret," she noted in awe.

Barret gibbered incoherently for a moment.

   "Yeah, I also ain't never seen THAT before!"

   "What is that, anyway?" Tifa wondered. "You think this is karma for complaining about all those motorcycle thingies back there?"

   "No," Barret replied emphatically. "I think that thing ate karma for lunch, and had hope for dessert!"

   "And a side-order of fries," the creature itself added in a surprisingly high-pitched voice, grinning a surprisingly charming grin. Or at least, as much of one as its demonically glowing mouth would allow.

   "Hold on," Cloud called, dragging himself from the hole, flipping as he did through a thin volume, proudly bearing on the front the words, 'Official Final Fantasy VII Strategy Guide.' "If I'm not mistaken – and let's face it, when has that ever happened? – that thing looks an awful lot like Diamond Weapon!"

   "You've heard of me?" the massive creature chirped.

   "Well, you're right here on Page 161 in the strategy guide!"

   "I'm famous!" it squealed giddily. 

   "Sure are," Cloud agreed. "Unfortunately, you're famous a little early. See, we're only on Page 65. You're almost a hundred pages early!"

   "Oh," Diamond Weapon said, quite sobered by this news. "That's embarrassing. Hey, can I kill you anyway?"

   "No!" Tifa and Barret exclaimed together in unsettlingly similar pitch.

Diamond Weapon pouted, his massive shoulders slumping.

   "Are you sure? I hate to make another trip...the missus gets upset when I go out. Maybe you've heard of her? Ruby Weapon? She's always blasting things with Ultima when she gets mad, sucking people into vortexes, generally not a pleasant person. But I love her! It just gets worrisome when you cross her. Why, I remember this one time – "

At this point, Diamond Weapon noticed the strangely...sneaky sound to the background music, and took a moment to wonder at its origin. This led him to look down – way down – at which point he noticed something odd.

   "Why, they've buggered off!" He pouted again. "Eh, well, I'll just have to come back and kill them later."


	5. Sometimes, at Night, Tifa Turns Into a B...

Chapter 5 - Sometimes, At Night, Tifa Turns Into a Black Man

------------------------------------------------

   "Whew!" Cloud sighed in relief as he sauntered into the cobblestone streets of the small town, followed by a weary Tifa and an annoyed Barret, desperately craving a beer. "We've finally reached Kalm! Of course," he continued in an annoyed grumble, "now we have to wait around for hours for Aeris and Red XIII to show up with those two idiots."

   "Hi, guys!" a glaringly familiar voice called cheerfully from the second story window of the inn.

Tifa, Cloud, and Barret looked slowly, cringingly, up at the source of the sound.

   "Hi, Yezo," Tifa called with the most forced friendliness imaginable.

   "Oh, if only it had been hours," Barret whimpered.

   "Hey, look at it this way," Cloud said weakly. "At least we'll be able to get on with the plot now - providing we don't have to deal with any more annoying, meandering flashbacks."

   "Yeah," Tifa agreed. "Well, let's go check in."

   "An' I hope this inn has more than one room an' three beds," Barret grumbled. 

-----------------------------------------------

   "What took you guys so long to get here?" Bezo asked reproachfully.

   "Yeah! We've been waiting for hours!" Aeris said seriously.

   "We had a run-in with a really huge creature," Tifa sighed. "It buried Cloud. Twice."

   "But we dug him up," Barret said wearily. "Sometimes I wonder why."

   "Look, guys, we don't have time for this," Cloud said exasperatedly. "Let's get down to business."

   "And 'business' would be.?" Tifa asked.

   "Talking about Sephiroth!"

   "Ugh," said Aeris, Tifa, Barret, Red XIII, and Yezo.

   "Yaay!" said Bezo. "He's the coolest!" 

   "Anyway," Cloud continued through gritted teeth, pointedly ignoring Bezo, who was by now trying to style his bangs into two gigantic arcs at the front of his head, "what have you all heard from the townspeople?"

   "We've heard that a man in black carrying a large sword passed through here," Red XIII replied, offering an inward prayer of thanksgiving to his ancestors that they seemed to have actually moved from meandering silly conversation onto something with a point.

   "Yeah," Bezo agreed. "Sounds like Neo to me!"

   "Really? I think it's Vicious," Yezo confided.

   "Silly Yezo," Bezo said, patting her tail fondly. "Vicious doesn't have a _large_ sword; he has a normal-sized sword!"

   "But Neo doesn't have _any_ sword!"

   "Remember when he fought the agent on top of the trailer?" Bezo demanded impatiently.

   "That was Morpheus," Yezo said soothingly.

Bezo blinked. 

   "Neo isn't Morpheus?"

   "Ahem," Aeris said. "Can you talk about your friends some other time? Red, go on."

   "Well, that's all, really. Oh, and he's got a choir with him. They headed east, apparently."

   "Great! Well, then, tomorrow morning we head east!" Cloud said jubilantly. Then he scowled. "Damn, I hate Sephiroth. Back when I lived in Nibelheim-"

Here, Cloud was interrupted by a snicker, rather deep in pitch.

   "Okay, I know that wasn't Bezo, Yezo, or Aeris."

   "Or Tifa," Aeris added.

   "I don't know," Cloud mused thoughtfully. "Sometimes at night, she turns into a black man. Either that," he laughed, "or, you know, I've been sleeping with...Barret...oh, God..."

   "Y'know," Barret began delicately, "I wasn't gonna say anythin', but since we brought it up, I don't really enjoy it when you spoon."

   "I thought you were Tifa!" Cloud exclaimed, near tears.

   "Yeah, my feminine hips, my long legs, my full breasts, and my long flowin' hair down to my sweet ass tend to do that," Barret muttered sarcastically.

   "Wow, Barret has no idea what he looks like," Bezo noted aside to Yezo.

She nodded, and then blinked, and then turned to him with a frown.

   "Um...honey?"

   "An' of course, Tifa don't have a huge $#*&$@#in' GUN on her arm!" Barret was meanwhile continuing.

   "Well, okay, then!" Cloud exclaimed huffily. "From now on, I'll just sleep with Tifa!"

   "Fine by me," Barret shot back. "It don't matter if Barret's the only one that don't got a woman. Barret don't need nobody in his bed...nobody, dammit!"

   "Are you okay, Barret?" Tifa asked hesitantly.

   "Yeah, fine," he replied, slightly weepy. "I jus' need some alone time."

   "Well, we'd love to give you time, Barret," Aeris said. "But we can't, because I hear harps, and we _all_ know what that means."

   "Oh, God, not another flashback," Red XIII grumbled.

   "Hey, you weren't even there for the first one," Barret protested.

   "Okay, look, guys," Cloud began impatiently. "I hired all these harpists, and I'm not letting them go to waste, so shut up and let me have my Sephiroth flashback! And Bezo, quit making shiny eyes!"

   "But I like Sephiroth!"

   "Hmph!" Yezo hmphed, eyes beginning to fill with tears. "I remember when he liked _me_."

   "I do like you!" Bezo protested. "You're just no Sephiroth. But then, how could you be?"

   "Yeah," Yezo agreed. "First of all, I'm not a _man_!" 

   "Oh, sure," Bezo said indignantly. "Like I don't know that."

   "Guys!" Cloud barked. "Sto-ry!"

   "You want a story, Cloud?" Yezo said excitedly. "I could tell you about the time I saw the bunny-"

   "No! This is MY story!"

   "You know, I do see a resemblance," Bezo noted, looking thoughtfully at Cloud and imagining him with less spiky blonde hair and severe issues with his father.

   "Shut up!" Cloud whined.

   "It just got even stronger!" Bezo said.

Cloud gritted his teeth.

   "What part of 'shut up' don't you understand?" he asked slowly.

   "Um.up?" Yezo guessed.

   "ERGH!" Cloud said articulately.

   "Cloud, calm down," Tifa requested wearily. "You're going to have an aneurysm. And you're no good to us dead, or in a coma, or something."

Cloud started pacing. 

    "Okay," he said, glaring viciously at Yezo. "Let me ask you a rhetorical question. Supposing a rather irate person waved a gigantic sword in your face and told you to shut up and listen. What do you do?"

   "Um.is there a bunny in it for me?" Yezo asked suspiciously.

   "Would I get to hold the sword at any point?" Bezo asked excitedly.

   "DO YOU EVEN KNOW WHAT RHETORICAL MEANS?!" Cloud bellowed.

   "Cloud," Tifa called warningly. "Aneurysm."

   "Although, the vein bulging out of his forehead is kinda cute," Aeris giggled.

   "Would you jus' tell your damn story? You two, no more interruptions, or I'll blow your damn heads off!" Barret growled, aiming his arm at Bezo and Yezo, who dropped obediently to the floor and paid attention for all of two seconds. 

   "Thanks, Barret," Cloud sighed gratefully.

   "Shut up, foo'! No more damn interruptions or I'll blow your damn head off!"

   "Fine," Cloud said snippily. "Now. When I lived back in Nibelheim."

----------------------------------------------

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi," sang the choir marching through the grassy plains after the grim, black-clad figure and his obscenely long sword. "Estuans interius ira vehementi!" 

Sephiroth grit his teeth. The man three from the back had been a little flat during the last four repetitions of the song, and it was driving him madder! People had been looking oddly at them as they passed since Kalm! Obviously, they must have noticed it too, and the humiliation of a member of _his_ choir singing off key was becoming gradually unbearable. 

   "Sephiroth!"

He came to a halt and turned very slowly.

   "That's my name," he said, trying his hardest to take a light-hearted view of things. "Don't wear it out."

   "Sephiroth!" they answered in unison. 

He sighed and kept on trudging.

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi."

His jaw clenched. It was a good song, and he had paid some guy - Nobby, Noboo, something like that - a lot of money to write it. And it _was_ catchy - no mistake about that. Still, after forty-seven hours of hearing it on his travels, at mealtimes, while trying to sleep, during his showers, and while polishing Masamune, it had become a little trying.

   "I don't suppose you guys know any _other_ songs, do you?" he asked, not turning around or slowing.

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi."

   "That means 'no', doesn't it?"

   "Sephiroth!"

   "Yes," he said, quickening his pace. "That's me. How about we try 'The Sound of Silence'? Maybe you know that one. It's by Simon and Garfunkle."

   "We don't know it," one young man admitted sadly before joining the rest of the choir in a resounding chord of "Sephiroth!"

   "Ergh."

   "Sors immanis, et inanis," his followers sang.

   "Certainly seems that way to me," Sephiroth grumbled, noting aside that they seemed to be approaching the marsh. Someone in that town had mentioned a hideous, vicious snake in its depths, hadn't they? He smirked, only to have this manifestation of slight amusement melt immediately away as behind him, in ringing tones.

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi."

   "Yes, I am burning inside with violent anger, thank-you," he growled. "But not for the reason you might think. Or any other reason than these idiots NOT SHUTTING UP!"

   "Sephiroth!"

   "Thank-you for that handy visual aid," he grumbled as he reached the marsh and began to slosh through. 

   "Sephiroth!"  
   "Yeah. Thanks."

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi."

   "Oh, God, not again," Sephiroth said in something remarkably close to a whimper. "And that one kid is still flat, too!"

   "Sephiroth!" 

   "Okay. That's-"

   "Sephiroth!"

Something snapping in his mind, Sephiroth came to a dead halt. He turned slowly, his gaze resting on the young man three from the back.

   "You, there. Come here for a minute, will you?"

--------------------------------------------------

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi." Bezo sang merrily, marching in time.

   "Bezo?" Yezo interrupted him.

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi."

   "Bezo, Cloud's forehead is getting all bulgy again!" the cat-girl announced, glancing nervously at Cloud, who was storming through the grassy fields outside of the Chocobo ranch, the vein in his forehead indeed protruding most impressively.

   "Sephirosu!" Bezo finished triumphantly.

At this, three gals, two guys, and a puppy-wuppy came to a halt and scratched their heads in confusion, save for the puppy-wuppy, for obvious reasons. Even Cloud took time off from his impending aneurysm to wave his hands about and demand of the skies what this idiot was going on about.

   "That's how the song goes," Bezo said defensively, crossing his arms and pouting.

   "Just who is this Sephirosu?" Cloud asked, putting a hand to his chin in the deepest thought he was capable of. Which wasn't terribly. "Hey, Barret, do you think he has any relation to Sephiroth?"

   "Sephirosu _is_ Sephiroth," Bezo informed him proudly. 

   "No, _Sephiroth_ is Sephiroth. Now I'd like to know who Sephirosu is."

   "Sephirosu is how the superior Japanese say it," Bezo said airily. 

   "They also say Aerith, right?" Yezo asked.

At this, Aeris' hands clenched into tight, angry fists. 

   "Don't. Call. Me. Aerith."

   "Thorry," Tifa snickered.

   "You're all mean!" Aeris declared tearfully before running away. Her stormy weeping drifted back toward the group.

   "Alright," Cloud spoke up briskly. "Let'th get down to buthineth." Then he stopped and frowned. "Thorry. No! Sorry! Sorry!"

   "Go on," Barret suggested pleasantly, his gun-arm aimed at Cloud's head.

   "Okay," Cloud agreed nervously. "Now, the way I see it, the next thing we've gotta do is go catch a Chocobo!"

   "Why?" Tifa asked.

   "Well, 'cause the Chocobo farm is right here, isn't it? That's gotta mean something!"  
   "Can't argue with logic," Red XIII said dryly.

   "How 'bout with what this fool's spoutin'?" Barret grumbled.

   "Look, let's just get a Chocobo, okay, guys?" Tifa said wearily. "Having a Chocobo can always come in handy, can't it?"

   "Yeah," Cloud agreed. "And Aeris _is_ getting kind of far away."

   "Is she still off huffing?" Bezo asked.

   "No, she's just running away crying for exercise," Red XIII replied sarcastically.

   "Well, I do that sometimes," Yezo said seriously. "The crying promotes better lung capacity. Although, it does scare the bunnies away."

   "Let's just go, okay?" Cloud sighed, starting away.

   "Estuans interius ira vehementi!" Bezo sang.

   "Why me?" Cloud whimpered.

   "Sephirosu!"

-------------------------------------------------


End file.
